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Roux, Brown, for Immediate Use
Put an ounce of butter into a saucepan over a slow fire, and when it is dissolved shake into it an ounce and a half of dried flour. Stir with a wooden spoon until it has acquired a light-brown colour; this will take about ten minutes. Remove the roux from the fire for two minutes to cool, add a pint and a half of stock, stir this till it boils up, then draw the saucepan to the side of the fire, and let the sauce simmer till it is smooth and of a proper consistency.
A working brown roux and the thin brown sauce it thickens, in the proportions Cassell's used throughout its sauce chapter. The heading matters: this is the version made and used the same hour, not the batch kept in a jar.
- The proportions1 oz butter (2 tablespoons) to 1½ oz flour (a generous 1/3 cup) — more flour than fat, which is what lets a brown roux thicken after its starch has been weakened by browning. A pint and a half means an imperial pint here, so about 30 fl oz, or roughly 3½ to 3¾ US cups of stock.
- Consistency to expectThat much liquid to that much flour gives a pouring sauce, not a coating one. If you want it thicker, reduce it by simmering rather than adding flour at the end.
- "Dried flour"Victorian kitchens warmed flour in a low oven or by the fire to drive off damp, since flour was stored in sacks and bins. Modern bagged flour needs none of this; use it straight.
- Slow fire, ten minutesLow heat throughout. Ten minutes gets you a light brown — the colour of a hazelnut shell. Rushing it on high heat scorches specks of flour that will taste bitter in the finished sauce and cannot be strained out.
- The hinge: cool it before the stock goes inThe two-minute rest off the heat is the one instruction not to skip. Letting the roux drop below sizzling lets the stock go in smoothly and gives you a better chance of a lump-free sauce. Stir constantly until it boils, as the recipe directs.
- Keep stirring in the cornersA wooden spoon (or a flat-edged wooden spatula) reaches the angle where the pan side meets the base, which is where flour catches. A whisk is fine once the stock is in.
- Simmer timeThe recipe sets no clock, only 'till it is smooth and of a proper consistency'. Expect to give it a fair while at a bare simmer, skimming any scum, to cook out the raw-flour taste.
- YieldAbout 3 cups of finished sauce after reduction — enough as the base for a braise, or for eight to ten servings poured over meat.
Roux is simply the French for reddish-brown, and the word entered English cookery books wholesale in the nineteenth century along with the sauce system it belongs to — the codification generally traced to Carême, who organised French sauces around brown and white foundations. Cassell's gives a brown roux recipe "for immediate use", the sort of thickening that made sense in a large household with a cook who wanted it on hand at any hour.